Broad Arrows

Devonshire, pleasantest county in Britain, has a bleak centre. Midway between Plymouth and Exeter lies Dartmoor, a silent ocean of grey, treeless hills that support nothing but gorse, primroses in spring, and a few water-logged sheep. In its middle lies a grim, grey prison.

Trouble has been brewing at Dartmoor Prison for weeks. Long-term convicts are kept there, hollow-eyed men in grey, their uniforms patterned with the Broad Arrow of King George.* They did not like their food, they did not like their cells, and they had heard tales of bloody, partly successful prison riots in the U. S. In Exeter and Plymouth, police chiefs were warned to be ready. Householders living on the moor were enrolled as special constables. Early last week Home Secretary Sir Herbert Samuel visited the prison to inspect conditions for himself.

A few days later it started. At breakfast time dishes of sugarless porridge were plunked down before the prisoners. So they picked it up and plastered the warders.

At dawn on Sunday the prison siren hooted across the moor. Convicts had broken into the warden's office and attempted to steal the keys. Every man in Princetown, the little village under the prison walls, was given a rifle and posted near the jail. The central cell block roared up in flames, the clock tower fell. Guards with riot guns stood on ladders and popped at every cropped head that showed above the parapet.

"Come and get it!" yelled the convicts. "Come and get it!"

A few practical prisoners broke into the canteen and guzzled the warders' whiskey and beer. Somebody knocked the spectacles off the 64-year-old Chaplain's nose. Another convict handed them back. "You'll need these, sir," said he, "you'd best be getting home."

Up from Plymouth chugged a fleet of rattling, steaming motorbusses. Fifty blue-helmeted policemen tumbled out like oranges. Not one had a revolver. They took off their overcoats, they spit on their hands, they grasped their truncheons.

"Come on, lads!" shouted the sergeant, and they charged through the gates. Twenty minutes later 70 convicts lay unconscious on the ground, with bloody, split heads. Nobody escaped, nobody was killed, 80 were injured.*

*Since the time of William III the Broad Arrow, a triangular mark in the shape of an arrowhead, has been used to brand property theoretically belonging to the King: Army & Navy stores, furniture, rifle barrels, cannon, and the uniforms of British prisoners.

*During the War of 1812 Dartmoor Prison held some 2,000 U. S. sailors impressed from merchant and naval ships who preferred prison rather than serving against the U. S. They too had no sugar on their porridge. On April 6, 1815 they struck. Guards killed six. In memory of them is a stained glass window in the prison chapel.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.